Sunday, March 19, 2006

No Room in Either Political Inn

If the New York Times can be believed (and once in a while it can be), the latest call for stripping the Catholic Church of its tax exemption comes, not from the ACLU or any other of the usual suspects, but from two "conservative" commentators, Tucker Carlson and Lou Dobbs. This may shock some people who have accepted the notion that political conservatives, and specifically the Republican Party, are the Church's natural allies and most reliable supporters in the public square. Such people have somehow managed to overlook the fact that, going all the way back to the days of "Mater Si, Magistra No" (usually attributed, perhaps incorrectly, to William F. Buckley, Jr.) American political conservatives have found a great deal of the Church's teaching, especially on social and economic matters, but also on the sanctity of life, to be completely unacceptable. Having fixated on the abortion issue as if it were the only one that counts, many faithful Catholics have been willing to overlook the extent to which American political conservatives, while paying lip-service to the Church's opposition to the slaughter of the unborn, have rejected its teachings on a great many other issues, some 0f which, if heeded, might contribute indirectly to a reduction in the number of abortions actually performed by making the future prospects of those unborn less unrelievedly grim.

Obviously, candidates for public office who are openly and enthusiastically in favor of abortion should not enjoy the support of Catholics. But neither should professed anti-abortion candidates who are open and enthusiastic supporters of frequently applied capital punishment, premptive and unjust warfare, legalized violations of human rights (like torture and indefinite detention without trial), and the unjust exploitation of the labor of the desperately poor. If it is indeed true that, in the Church, "the cafeteria is closed," then it also should be clear that the liberals are not the only ones who can no longer enjoy an entirely free choice of entrée. At this point in the discussion it is usually objected that the evil of abortion far outweighs the other evils which some conservatives are willing to tolerate or even to promote. Yet, on the basis of traditional Catholic moral teaching, it is far from clear exactly how this kind of calculus of wickedness can be undertaken.

We believe that the lives of all persons, born and unborn, are equally precious in the sight of God and have an equally inviolable right to exist; that each person is, indeed, of incalculable value and the object of an infinite love; that each is in himself alone worth the whole redemptive sacrifice of Christ; and that, finally, each and every person, from conception forward, must be treated as a subject and not as an object, as an end and not as a means. But if all this is true, then the moral weight of the Church's teaching on war and the various applications of justice must be valued as highly, when it comes to the formation of our political judgments and strategies, as that on abortion. We are perhaps less certain of the precise number of lives needlessly and sinfully sacrificed, directly or indirectly, during the last fifty years due to policies of aggression and greed promoted by the political right than we are of the number of those who have fallen victim to the license to abort so dear the political left. But that does not matter. The value of the human lives for which we are responsible and the evil of policies that permit them to be snuffed out when they get in our way cannot be toted up by means of simple arithmetic.

The fact is that neither American political party has room under its roof for those who adhere to the entire moral teaching of the Catholic Church. The Democrats, in trying to reconstitute themselves as a coalition of downtrodden minorities, especially in the 'seventies and early 'eighties of the last century, managed to alienate from themselves the sympathies of the broad immigrant working-class majority, much of it Catholic, which often regarded these minorities with a mixture of fear and loathing. Then, by accepting the claims of sub-cultural and life-style groupings as being essentially of the same kind and dignity as those earlier asserted by racial minorities, they committed the party to a number of positions to which Catholics and others rooted in the moral and cultural tradition of the West could not subscribe.

In the meantime, however, the Republican party has also transformed itself in ways which put it out of touch with the small-town, middle-class, somewhat isolationist conservatism which had once characterized the bulk of its popular support. Judged on the basis of the policies pursued by the present administration, it is sometimes difficult to see what it is that these self-styled "conservatives" are trying to conserve. The ever larger and more intrusive role of government, the assault on traditional civil liberties and constitutional guarantees, the unprecedented federal deficits, the unilateralism and foreign interventionism -- these do not seem to reflect classic conservative values. Nor do they, in many cases, reflect classic Christian values.

Of course, American politicians who claim to be conservative and who court the support of traditionally Catholic segments of the population have learned to make all the right noises, especially about issues that center around the family. But one is sometimes tempted to think that they can afford to do so precisely because these things have very little to do with what really seems to matter most to them, namely, the unbounded increase of their own wealth. Concerning those things which do really matter to plutocrats, they have shown themselves remarkably capable of moving mountains and getting things done. But, let's face it: the Republicans have been in charge of the executive branch for 26 out of the last 40 years, and all but two of the sitting justices of the Supreme Court are their appointees. Considering this, why has not more real progress been made by them in the fight against the abortion license? Of course, if the precedent of Roe v. Wade actually were to be overturned, the Republicans would thereby lose a valuable political asset.

However uncomfortable the realization, I think American Catholics must come to see that there really is no room for them, as Catholics, in the American political inn, no matter whether the innkeeper at any particular time be a Democrat or a Republican, a political liberal or a political conservative. For the time being, the Republican innkeepers have let us bed down in the equivalent of the manger, and this has let us entertain the illusion that we have found a home. But being allowed to lie down on someone else's straw has its price -- a price of which people like Tucker Carlson and Lou Dobbs are happy to remind us. The revocation of the Church's tax exempt status would put us on a very short route back into the catacombs, shorter even than the cumulative effect of seemingly endless tort judgments. (Just imagine the annual bill arriving at the New York chancery for the taxes on St. Patrick's cathedral!) Indeed, one might even conclude that we have here no lasting dwelling.

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